The Worst Movie Ever Made? with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson

Welcome to you, Rhang About. The podcast where sometimes we make fun bonus episodes

“one a month in fact, and this week we're sharing one with you to give you a sense of”

the kind of shenanigans we got up to back there behind the curtain. And in this case, it's a discussion about the worst film ever made or is it? Elaine May's Ishtar with Paul Shear and Amy Nicholson of the Unspooled Podcast. And in case you're curious about other episodes we've done in the past year, so don't worry, I have a little list for you. We've talked about Bigfoot with Lulu Miller, Elvira Mrs of the Dark with Eve Lindley, that time Kim Kardashian

wore Marilyn Monroe's dress for some reason with Eve Lindley and Carolina Donahue about Christmas ghosts with Chelsea Weber Smith, and of course most recently about one of my favorite phenomena when a doll has their own little doll, also with Chelsea Weber Smith, and survival tips with Blair Braverman. We're so lucky to have people who pay to subscribe to these episodes and support the show that way, and who have done so in many cases for such a very long time.

And so here's a preview of the kind of bonus stuff that we're trying out and having fun with, and either way, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. We help you to try it. Welcome to you, Ron, about the podcast where we've talked about the worst Oscars ever, and now we're talking about what some have called the worst movie ever, but is it? And why do we choose the things that we say are the worst? As the worst? Why do sugarals? One of those razzies, when clearly

it's perfect. With me today, our Paul Sheer and Amy Nicholson have unspooled welcome. Hello. Hi, we are so excited to be your big fans of this show, and excited to bring some, you know, some real culture to you today, as we talk about a very misunderstood film. It's true. On unspooled, we mostly talk about the films that the culture at large has deemed classics, and so it is such a treat. To get into a movie that the culture at large has deemed

got awful absolute trash, the punchline for everything bad that could ever happen in the world. We are of course. We're talking today, please. About the warm baby Dustin Hoffman film Ishtar, a movie that became such a joke that

“a comic strip like the far side who never made pop culture references, I believe has one pop”

culture reference, comic, and it is an Ishtar joke. Yeah, it's calm. I think something like the video's door of hell, and when you go in, the only VHS tape is Ishtar. It was to say actually

two Gary Larson's credit. He admitted later that he had never even seen Ishtar, he was just going

off of Ishtar's reputation, and he was like, that was mean, I take it back of all the comics that I've ever done. It's really good to know that Gary Larson rescinded that statement. And also that he doesn't regret any of the other ones. Well, you know, the cows really never complained. They felt like his insults to them were very justified. Well, he doesn't play that they used tools. I will say this. It's a different podcast, but there was a script for a far-side

movie, which they did shoot scenes of that probably would have topped Ishtar as far as being a movie ridicule for being absolutely awful. But what's interesting about this film, and that far-side cartoon is, I would argue most people didn't see Ishtar, but it was a joke, and it becomes this

“thing. This kind of rallying, right? I think that a lot of times we see this in our society, where”

we just kind of gang up, or we heard it was bad, or we conversely, we hear it's good, and we're all fans. You know, it's a weird way that we interact with culture. We don't even know that we like it. We just are kind of following, you know, like a popularity limings. We're either going to, you know, follow you off the ledge of the cliff, or push you off the cliff. Yeah, and I find it so capricious, because it's like, what if I told you there's a director

who puts their cast-through hell and makes them do 50 takes of one scene without giving them any notes of what to do and what to make it better. I could either be talking about Stanley Kubrick, who is generally recognises the greatest genius, in ways that we've kind of examined at the show,

or I could be talking about Elaine May, and how she made Ishtar and why she never got distracted

on the film again. Interesting. We're about David O'Rassel for that matter. Well, David O'Rassel's a whole different story. David O'Rassel's kicking people. Elaine May is just driving them crazy, like with Kubrick. Good for her. It's, I heard she bit somebody in the editing room. Okay,

So we are against fighting the people, but there's a place to do it. It's in the editing room.

Elaine May is known as a difficult filmmaker. In the sense that, you know, at one point when she was going to lose final cut on a film, she stole her own movie to keep it away from the studio. Like it had to go to court for them who need to get back to the studio. I could see myself doing that.

“Well, then maybe you have a little Elaine May in you, which I think is a compliment in many ways.”

Elaine May comes out being a comedian, a writer, an actress with a string of hits. Having her fingerprints all over movies like the graduate, a movie that we have very much covered on unspoken. I actually think some of the jokes you put in are kind of what kill it. But that said, people would Elaine May starts making hits. Movies, everybody loves.

Comedy is that make back tenfold their budget. She's a little nervous about putting her name on

those two. She is a perfectionist and perfectionism can be maddening. But I actually want to examine on this podcast. Why is this person the one who took all the blame? Because this is a gigantic story with a lot of people making a lot of bad decisions. Why is Font Hall synonymous with a Ron Contra which might be really exactly? What are they having common? Well, you know, this movie is really interesting because for Hollywood,

these are some of the biggest players imaginable at the time. Right? In the early 80s, you have warm baby who is sitting on top of at least the Hollywood world. Right? And like Amy said, Elaine May is this secret comedy genius. She's been behind movies like The Heartbreak Kid. And

one of the things we haven't touched on if you're not familiar with Elaine May, she was a part of

Nichols and May. This transformational comedy duo that blew the minds of so many people in the 1950s. They were doing two person improvisation. They were rock stars. They were to get together or they weren't read their book. Every book will give you a little bit of a different story of what that was. But what they were were legends. So Elaine May is a legend beyond her film. She is a comedy genius. So for her team up to make a comedy with warm baby, that sounds exciting.

And then you add Dustin Hoffman to the mix. Who's also at his peak. Right? You know, this is kind of like the Avengers of neurotic comedy. Well, and one thing that these stars have in common is that both warm and baby and Dustin Hoffman. Oh, Elaine May. Feel like part of their

“success is due to Elaine May. Because even though Elaine May hasn't directed a movie since the”

70s, she's been doing a lot of uncredited screen rights. She did a lot of work on reds, which one wore in baby his best director Oscar. And she did a lot of work on Tootsie. And so these two guys are like, she's our secret genius. Let's help her. Let's make her famous. Let's make her the director of a movie that combines all of our star clouds. There's no way that this is going to fail. We're going to do Elaine May. The biggest solid that's going to make her reputation golden.

And it's a goofy, buddy musical spy paper about two terrible lounge singers who stumble into a Middle Eastern coup. Now on its surface, that's a great place for Elaine May to play. Because like I mentioned, she is coming off of one of the famous comedy duo. So to make a movie about lounge singer comedy duo, that feels right in the wheelhouse of what Elaine May can do and has lived through. And you know, because it's warm, baby, they want to go big. They want to shoot in the Sahara.

They want camels. They want all of it. And because it's warm, baby studios go, short. Yeah. You could take your friend and let them make a movie. We're in time, are we? Well, at this point, it's star comes out in 87. So we're about maybe. Well, that's better than I thought for some reason. Yes. So it's, you know, I would imagine

“this probably is developing probably from 84 to 85. Is that about right, Amy? Would you say?”

Yeah. It's about that. Yeah. But they're so like extremely established. Yes. Yes. Established, but also with suspense. Because, you know, we mentioned, as we mentioned, to see neither, baby nor Hoffman has really made a movie sense. So there's this build-up. When are they going to act again? When are we going to see them again? In from start to finish, they go four and a half years without being in a movie. It's like waiting for Oceans 13 or something.

When am I going to see forever? Think about what this superhero again. Soon, Amy, soon, it's going to happen. But also Elaine May is in the same kind of career quietness, right? Because she has made the heartbreak kid a movie which is truly great. I just want to shout out the heartbreakage. You can't find it really anywhere because it was or it is owned by a pharmaceutical company in a very weird twist of fate. But it is a fantastic film. But she hasn't made anything

for quite some time. I mean, Mikey and Nikki was 1976. That's a movie where she stole the print.

hasn't touched a movie from the director's chair. Right. But she's making very odd films every step of the way. Nothing is normal for her. And that's kind of her game. She doesn't like simplicity. I don't think that she likes structure. She wants things to feel fat and weird. You know, Mikey and Nikki, they talk about these scenes where they would just keep on rolling the script would end and she wouldn't cut the camera for 20 minutes. You know, as long as they had

camera in the mag, they would just keep on going. Yeah. There's a really funny specific story where, you know, the leads of Mikey and Nikki, they walk off the set. One of them's having a conversation somewhere in the back with what if his buddy is the other guy's on a smoke break or something. The camera guy is still rolling. And when he finally just cuts being like, "What am I doing?" Elaine may yells at him. She's like, "You don't know. They could come back. What if they come back?"

I love this. It's the Nixon approach to filmmaking. You just kind of roll into what happens.

“Yeah. And that's the thing. I think some people would say, "Whoa, she really is this improvisational”

genius." And other people would say, "Does she have any idea what she's doing? What is happening? Does she have any idea how much film costs?" One of the running jokes about Mikey and Nikki is that she used up, I think, three times as much film stock on that movie as Gone With The Wind.

As Gone With The Wind. It's amazing. And for years, you didn't even get to see her cut because

the studio recut it to make it more palatable. That's been happening a lot to her. You know, that also happened on the new leaf with Walter Manathau. But this movie is interesting because not only is she back in the director's chair, but she gets the highest budget ever given to a female director. It's like when they sent Sally right into space, it feels like where they're like, "All right, babe, if you fuck up in any way, we're not going to let any more women do this,

so have fun." Yeah, it does feel like you get gigantic tests. I mean, even the production designer of

“Ishhtar, this Miss Band Paul Silver, he was like sticking up for Eline May, he said, "This”

woman had not made a movie in 10 years, and then the first thing she had to do was paint the system chapel." No, we should say the 80s, by the way, was a time that Paul and I reminisce about a lot where you had really profitable blockbuster big budget comedies in theaters.

You know, now it's almost hard to imagine anybody spending this type of money, $47 million,

even in 1980s money on making a big budget comedy. But this is like, you know, this is Ghostbusters era. You can take a big swing. You can afford it. Right. She really admires Hoffman. She really admires baby. They know each other, and she knows some secrets about them. She knows that before they both became major actors, they wanted to be singers. They had a piano act kind of separately. They were club guys. There's another world of both of them where if they had followed their

original passion, maybe they would have been just mediocre singers and not movie stars, and that's sort of what this movie is about. You know, honoring these guys who are pretty lousy musicians, but they're going for their dreams. You know, I really like the opening stretches of this scene where you're just watching them screw around at the piano and like chasing this artistry that they're lousy yet, but they're sincere about it. And I know we've already

talked about how Elaine May has a very peculiar way of doing things. We want to talk about peculiar, warm, baby, and Dustin Hoffman are also very meticulous performers who in every

story that I've ever heard never feel like it's fully right or that they're fully there or

they're so fully there that they can't do anything else, right? They are not easy performer. So you have some opinion and 16-chappell with two people watching going, I don't think that that's exactly right. Well, we are grabbing the paintbrush and doing it themselves and then painting over the next one and then painting over the next one because this is a movie that winds up with all three of them hiring their own editing team and being like, "No, this is my cut of the movie, this is my

cut of the movie." And they're all backstabbing each other, going to be on each other's backs to the studio bosses. I mean, this is a movie with three personalities crammed into a gigantic blockbuster that even at its scale can probably only afford one of these personalities to take charge. Right. So, but that opening sequence that you're talking about, that's so funny is kind of these two actors in a nutshell, right? They're trying to make a jingle, they're trying to make a perfect

they are obsessed with being perfect in a way or creating a big hit. I mean, this movie is about these guys trying to find success, trying to make it work and I love how material they are in

“that opening, they are, they're bad, but they are very impassioned about being bad, right?”

Like, and I think that's a funny thing, like they work hard, but the result is bad. Yeah. Well, actually, I think they're coming up with something that maybe it should be your new theme songs. I mean, it's like telling the truth can be dangerous business. I think it should just not. I think so. I think that could be a nice treat after this many years.

output in a different medium of people who are like very good at a different thing that they do,

“you know, because there's like kind of an innocence to it that I think can be,”

I don't know, it's because something I like. Well, yeah, especially I think with Warren Bady and D.C. because Elaine May's having so much fun taking playboy Oscar winner Warren Bady and making him be a doofus in the shade of women hating him. I love this. Doofus Warren Bady is my favorite. Yes, I agree. He's so good. He's very funny in this and that's one of the weird things about this film is, and we'll get into it as we keep on talking about it, but there are some legitimately great

things about it, and performances are one of them across the board. Well, I might disagree on all the performances, but I think Bady is fantastic. I mean, what he's looking at Dustin Hoffman and he's wishing that he had Dustin Hoffman's game and he's like, oh, the way you walk, you can only do it with a small body. A little bit of midnight cowboy. A little bit. Yeah, just a tinge. Now, I think in New York, this filming is going okay, because the movie starts off in a very,

“you know, contemporary setting where the film really starts to go off the rails, at least from”

a production standpoint, is when they decide that they're going to go, well, originally they wanted to go to this Sahara, but they decide to shoot Morocco instead. It's a cheaper stand-in location. Now, I actually want to say this was not Elaine May's call. Okay. Elaine May was like, let's shoot this in America. Let's keep the cost low. And at this time, Colombia, who they're making this movie for, is owned by not Sony, but Coca-Cola. Yes. In Coca-Cola has this global empire

of course, and the Coca-Cola has a lot of money tied up in Morocco that they need to spend or use, so it's Coca-Cola's idea to put this film in Morocco. They steer this ship towards disaster. Wow. Coca-Cola's like go there as a business choice. Now, again, you asked when this movie was being made, 1985, October is when they are in Morocco. And just to put this in some context, there is some real-world regional instability here, right? You have terrorism,

guerrilla war. Yeah. It's going to say. Yeah. This is not the best time to be in Morocco, so much so that before shooting at some locations, they had to be a swap for landmines. Yeah. And at that point, if I were Elaine May, I would be like, "Tolga, but you know, you can't argue with Coke money." No. I mean, that's it.

“You have to go where Coke tells you to go. But it does also mean they're getting kidnapping”

threats for Dustin Hoffman by the PLO. I mean, stuff is bad. I mean, he's so easy to stuff in a bag and run away with, you know, "Oh, that's the thing about having a small body."

You know, so they're there, and here's the thing. Once they get there,

they're not making too many concessions. You know, a foreign land, they have fears of kidnapping, their sets might be, you know, war zones, but they're still going to ask for some big things. You know, they want a blue-eyed camel. They want that blue-eyed camel. They have to figure out where they can get a blue-eyed camel. Who do you even start asking about that kind of thing? I guess there would be camel wranglers that you would be working with. I guess these are the

things that make the film industry so fascinating. Right. But then there's the psychology on top of that, where they do exactly what you're thinking. They go to find a camel wrangler, and they immediately find a perfect camel. They're like, "Oh, that's the greatest camel. We should get that camel behind you." We've got this budget. We're here. What if there's better camels? That kind of perfectionism disease sets in? Yeah. You got to just go with the camel.

That's right. Right. Right. There are the obvious problems. Hey, don't look at gift camels in the mouth. Yeah. But they did it. They go hunting for war camels. They interview a whole bunch of camels. They spend tons of time money on this camel

quest. They never find a camel as good as that first camel. They have to go back to the people who

tried to sell them that first camel and say, "We're sorry. Can we buy that camel now?" And those people say, "We ate it." Oh. Yeah. I was expecting it to be like, "It's double now, but that's actually because that's not the camel." It became dinner. But that's the tenor of what's going on here. You know, you can hear the psychosis in the stories that are coming out where everyone is trying to hard and in the process making stuff worse. And again, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

You know, we're talking about a lot of production nightmares. And, you know, as somebody who definitely studies this on how to this get made, I know that it can go into different directions. You can get things that come out like the room. Tommy was those. The room not Breelarson's room. Or you can get something like a apocalypse now, which goes through, you know, heart attacks and shut down and actors showing up are not showing up. And you get this classic. So just because

there's a troubled production doesn't always mean there's going to be a bad film at the end

Well, and actually the D.P. here, Vitorio Storaro. He is the D.P. who did a apocalypse now.

“So he is on in my zone, man. But he's coming in not so much, I would say, as a lane,”

maze guy. He's coming in as Warren Batie's guy. Because he did reds. And then together, they'd go on and do like Dick Tracy bullworth. Dick Tracy. I mean, Paul, you've been on a ton of movie sets. I'm sure you understand this pattern of like, where is everybody's allegiance? Who's going to get listened to the most? When you're worth reading, you have an Oscar for being a director. Aren't you going to carry as much weight? What do you tell

the D.P. what to do? Well, this is the kind of the problem. Everyone's looking about where their bread is buttered. You know, in a certain realm in television. And I'm going to put this as a very big, you know, there's going to be people like, well, technically, but I'll tell you that in television, the showrunner is king. Right. The showrunner is the person who's, it's their idea. And they hire the directors. Sometimes they work in tandem with a director. Everybody is a legend to the showrunner

for the most part. In film, it can get blurry. Because a lot of the times the a-list talent is the star. Now, there are directors stars. And it's like, it's a director's medium. Film is a director's medium. You hear that a lot. But, you know, there is this rule in the D.G.A.

about partnerships. Basically, like the Cohen brothers, if they direct together, if they ever break

apart, they can't rejoin as a partnership. That's a rule that the D.G.A. has. Sometimes you can, there's a little bit of a tweak that you can make to it, like, yes, you can come back. But the real reason that they put this in place is because there was a time when lead actors would say to the director, well, we're directing it together. I'm in it with you. So, we'll be co-directors on this. Right? So, that law was kind of put in place. So, lead actors wouldn't kind of use

serve the director. Yeah. Which makes sense. Because if there wasn't a law against it, then probably 35% of lead actors would at one point try successfully to do it. Oh, I listened to a gigantic actor tell me that he wrote a handful of giant films. And when I looked, not even a co-written by credit, no credit on the page, right? But I think that that's time. Sometimes a big actor will feel like, well, I added that line. I'm a writer on this movie. I talked about

that shot. I should be directing this movie, right? I had it say with, I changed that. That was my

“proposition. And you know what, that is kind of this ego that you have to deal with. So,”

yes, to Amy's question, there is this allegiance. Who am I paying attention to? Who is going to be a male ticket? And I would argue that if you're on this set, your male ticket is going to be warm, baby, or Dustin Hoffman, ultimately, you know, just because their track record is more solid. And they would be right. Yeah, even if they've gone four and a half years without making a movie, that's still less than half of what Elaine May has gone. If you're looking for a job, stick with them.

Now, I will say you brought up this cinematographer, uh, Vittorio, uh, Storaro. I'm yes, Storaro. This guy is not the right person for this movie, right? This is a person who is shooting Ishtar, like it's, um, Lawrence of Arabia. It looks like a desert epic. And he and Elaine may are at each other's throats because she wants to shoot it like a comedy. And he's trying to shoot it like an epic, right? And at this point, Warren Bady, who has worked with him, is like, well,

let's trust him. He knows how to make things look good. But what looks good in a comedy doesn't always

look good in an epic. It's a different medium. It's their different techniques at play there. So, that's a real source of tension. And to know that your lead star is going to side with the D.P. That takes away a ton of Elaine May's power. And does that kind of thing happen to males or actors that much with someone who has, you know, a fairly important job like D.P. being like, no.

“Absolutely. Absolutely. And here's why I'll say it because the A list star is the person, right?”

And you know, we're not, probably not to the top 10 male directors. That's probably not happening, right? But I will say that if you're a new director, you come in. You talk to a lot of these younger directors. They like, oh my gosh, my first opportunity to work on a big movie. And it's they are there truly as a figurehead to get beaten up by everybody else, right? They are like, they're like, put there and let us tell you what to do. I've seen happen. I've been on

sex. And I admire kids stream about doing fully. Oh, it is, it is a, isn't that's, I will tell you that, um, I mean, I even know a giant actor and a giant director who came to blows on that. Like actors sometimes are coming at it from the point of view of, I need to protect myself. There's a great article and entertainment weekly. I recommend this all the time. It was for last Vegas. The Michael Douglas, like, he's getting married, but they're all old and he goes there with like Kevin

Yeah, or like those Shane found ensemble movies for guys. Exactly. So there is a round table

“and entertainment weekly where they are all talking about working with directors. And Morgan Freeman”

says, oh, if a director tells me how to do a scene, I just ignore them. And everyone's sort of sloughing like yeah yeah yeah we don't listen to the director no no no no no yeah no his job is to put the camera away the cameras we don't listen to like it's not even a quiet leak kept idea it's like just out there it's like I know how to do me yeah now when she's say there is a producer out there who doesn't like that this is how Hollywood is run and he

is British his name is David Putnam he is known because he made movies like chariot's a fire and he had this reputation in Hollywood is a guy who had a better way of doing this than Hollywood has been run he's like I don't like expensive movies I think I should be making more lower budget movies I think movies star shouldn't have this much power I agree with a lot of what he was saying back then and this guy becomes the head of Columbia Pictures in the middle of

“the of the ishtar shoot he is the absolute wrong tempo if you want to help shepherd this movie across”

the finish line because ishtar represents everything he's trying to prove that Hollywood shouldn't be Hollywood shouldn't be controlled by the Warren Bades and the Dustin Hoffman of the world who by the way

as expensive as this movie is over $10 million of its budget goes to their salaries it was this

expensive in part because of their fees he doesn't like that he doesn't like the cloud that they have so it's in David Putnam's interest if ishtar is a flop because then he can turn around and say see we need to stop doing this you guys need to listen to me well this is a big deal whatever new person comes in midstream what they want to do is prove that the person before them was an absolute failure because they can't take credit for that success got it's almost like it's political or

something oh it's very true it's incredibly political it's it's severance times 12 i mean you you sawn happen in this year where uh Mike Deluca and Pam Abdi who run Warner Bros before like minecraft and sinners came out they're like well guess what these two suck and these movies are going to suck and they wreck this studio and then all of a sudden minecraft is a big hit and then the tide turned it's like well they weren't actually really involved with that that was before that of them then

sinners comes out well but technically that doesn't really work and then when uh one battle after another came out they're like ah you see it didn't make uh as much as we thought but now that movie's

already made $200 million right like internationally but i just think that there's always this

like kind of jocking position when you're the head you kind of root for failure in the past because then you can like Amy said make your point in the future mm yeah i mean i don't know if there's any parallel to this happening in modern politics for previous people are getting blamed for what's happening but you know you know you know you either because you know for a few from purely entertainment perspective though i i feel like there's a way that the public can kind of become complicit in

this or that that kind of is in tune with the way we like to operate because we love i don't know it feels like with the kind of technology we've had in the past hundred odd years culture has been able to move faster and so we're at this kind of continually faster pace of like that was the old thing block this is the new thing a thing so specific that it's gonna be really easy to get tired of it very soon yeah i feel like whenever anybody gets anointed the internet's next boyfriend they should

just run and hide because that never hurts out well for anybody yeah now i will say that adding to

all of this onset pressure of getting this would be done being in an hostile territory gossip is leaking out throughout the entire production as it does a lane may hated the heat and the sun she dressed very bizarre people said that she looked like a storm trooper onset because she was wearing these very big glasses yet a parasol she was in all these like things to keep her away from

“the sun and she came storm trooper as a person who sunburns i want to say get it girl i believe in”

you i would love to walk around in nothing but like gigantic sunglasses and gawls all the time oh god yeah well the crew members that would joke that she was dressed for a lunar landing when she stepped outside and there were people in Morocco who were convinced that she was one of the celebrities from the film that was hiding from assassins there's a town in Morocco called like Ozar zazzi they used to call her the phantom of zazzi like so she she had that you know i would

like her to put her cross feet next to you know the dp's cross feet and they can see who age better that's true she's 93 she's alive and kick and she's doing something well and then you know you also have warm baby who is a famous coxman i guess you know so you're getting you know you're getting these

all these photos coming out of you know who is he winding and dining in Morocco no one but it's still was gossip again all of this is just fueling the bad thing you know then they have to be fair we should say the part where he's keeping it in his tunic is that the woman he's seeing at the time Isabella Johnny is in the movie she's the female lead who's like dressed as a boy and walking around did he's got to show i harder to get some private time i love her worn baby at this point on

word was like i only make a movie once every few years but if i do it's with the potentially

very difficult woman i'm dating right now so that's fine you know it's always a good time to work

with the person that you're in a relationship with well but it does seem to have like added a lot attention to this set because everybody says that a Johnny did not get along very well with me and i

“don't know who's to blame for that but it sounds like me wasn't particularly nice to her well i think”

that you know may as having a hard time over you know we've talked about all the issues but she's going through certain periods of the film not talking to warm baby right there are these moments where there is like this action scene that they have to shoot in warm baby's you know over shoulder telling her how to do it and she's like you want to do it go do it and apparently like he froze but these are the stories that are coming out so we have romance we have nobody

talking to each other a lane may looking like a storm trooper and i will say just to make sure that

everyone gets a little bit of this uh dust and Hoffman a lot of people saying oh he's method on

this movie he's so method he doesn't really he's in a comedy he still thinks he's in rainman right so there like what's true what's not true doesn't make a difference what's getting back to the gossip rags is that every part of this movie is a disaster yeah i mean people are thinking this movie isn't even going to finish getting made like there's buzz that this is going to fall apart before it's even done so it's kind of like titanic exactly like titanic except titanic winds up being

great except that'll work out but i feel like the you know it's hard to remember now is that the way people talked about it when it was in production was like oh boy this is going to be it feels like people were like sharpening their knives getting ready to have a shot and fight a feast time James Cameron which would be nice but it hasn't happened absolutely we want to watch people fail

“right i think that that's a part of we raise people up and we want to tear them down you know i”

think we saw this year with like Taylor Swift's album it was like okay now she's happy so now she's sucks and actually that's a symbol of this and you know we love two love our stars and we love to not to get let them get too big of a head now you might believe that it's three stars that are fighting that's causing the problems of this film but Amy do you want to i i can talk about it but i don't know if you knew about this in some of your research maybe it was because they they had a

curse because they pissed off a vulture did you hear about this no please tell me about the angry vulture alright so there is a time when they're trying to uh shoot a scene with a vulture uh vulture's supposed to be landing next to a warm baby and Elaine May shoots this landing scene over 50 times and there is a rumor around set that she has upset the gods in a way like this is like people felt like this film was cursed because they were messing with animals they were messing

with landscape so it like this maybe all just because of pissed off vulture started a sandstorm and wrecked havoc on this set who knows it could be anything oh who knows but i do think a vulture magazine had been around back then they would have been having a field day with any sort of stories from this and yeah you're right you brought up the fact that she has been messing with the sand i mean maybe the most famous story about Elaine May's extravagance was that

when they were trying to figure out where exactly in the Moroccan desert they were going to film they had a couple limitations one of them is they have to make it by a very nice hotel because

people want to go and sleep in a very nice hotel at night they looked around they finally found

when they had these dunes that Elaine may have been describing you know the big rolling sweeping ones the ones that you see and like the sex in the city movie they get there they're like we did it we did it we did it and then May when she woke up and walked out of the hotel in the morning and looked at the dunes she was like oh no this won't do i don't want them to be rolling i want them to be flat and the best option they had was to spend 10 days bulldozing the dunes to be absolutely

flat now one or two people say that this is absolutely not true but pretty much everybody else is that it thousand first half and it would kind of fit the psychology because i think she feels like she's getting under fire from every side and one of her ways of dealing with avoiding making

“a mistake is just to try to delay doing anything as long as she can you should take like”

re-shoots of what she had done the day before in the morning because she was right about people yelling at her about doing something wrong the next time around do you know those people like that you get so in their head about making a mistake that then they can't go forward yes it's me i'm willing me i have a lot to think about this also reminds me of the story of when michael sumino or kimino is making heavensgate that he wasn't that he like knocked down an entire front here

thing it's going to be great which that's a whole other episode it is a whole other episode but

“because these films are coming out i think pretty close to each other i think they're snowballing”

right there's a sense of right hey all these guys all these are tours are leading us to the director's mad with power exactly and again i think that there's a battle here between press and production right you have we are talking about the studio head who's kind of hoping it fails to prove his own point and also i should say because he specifically did not like war and baby and dust and Hoffman like this guy david putman he said in public to the press that he thought

dust and Hoffman had a molivalent energy and he also said he thought war and baby should be spanked for wasting so much money on reds oh wow i didn't know that and war and baby might

elect a spanking but hey all right let's all spank war and baby i'm sure he would hate that

oh no please don't spank me for spending money no don't spank me Diane keyton and we already know that like this idea of wanting to see a star fall from grace but i think it was amplified also by the fact that they weren't really letting press on set and that is a big deal like you see all these you know big blockbusters part of the allor of it is you send out press to give goodwill press this cut off from the set so it is this other thing of

now they're kind of pissed off too so you've you've made enemies of everybody you have two stars who are not like known for their public personas or being outgoingly you know a few seven in the public i guess uh you have like a studio head who's against it the press is against

it everyone is against it and now you take this Moroccan shoot and you bring it to the states

you bring it to the states where you think okay things are gonna get easier now that we are in New York but no it gets worse in New York which is interesting because like i said earlier it feels like the New York stuff is really working for me in a way like i really love the way the movie starts but it's way more tense when they're back home because they all they have all their resources their resources to stay away from each other and then they're also working with

extras and crews that are like well no no we can't shoot this much you know in Morocco

“i think they had a pretty easy way of manipulating everybody to work very long hours you know”

yeah i mean you're there in that summer camp mindset it's like well we're all in this together and you know i think what happens is that ability or that inability of only made to move on to make a quick decision that became the real problem with New York uh wardrobe person said something like in Morocco we lost time to weather in New York we lost time to the clock you know she would do 15 passes on a tiny gesture like a dormant shifting extra weight you know a piece

of paper landing on the counter uh she was allergic to like one take solutions you know and so now this is the other thing that happens it's even crazier that that DP that we talked about he's whole team stayed on that Italian team his whole camera department stayed on but there were new rules union rules in New York that required a full parallel American crew so now you have two camera crews you have a grip two grips two electric stick you know like every they have

duplicates here so now the warring in the top line of you know the actors and directors are being multiplied behind the camera literally it's a little bit inefficient just a little bit yeah it also feels like we have I want to like do the political comparison again because it does feel like these are two areas of like great American pageantry and that there's this kind of maybe relationship between the press and a movie that's in production that's a little

bit like you know when we're in kind of primary season in the candidates are running and you have like the press buses that's going around with them and there's this like symbiotic relationship which I mean things we've gotten we're in the past 10 years but in the past there's been like a fairly defined sense of etiquette about who has access and how the rules to that work and that people get very upset when that gets destabilized and it also seems like an warring baby

and Dustin Hoffman you have two stars who have been so successful and maybe have developed you know that enough has that they kind of don't feel like they have to play ball maybe.

“I think that's exactly right and what's interesting to trace is that when all this is going on”

in 1987 all of these figures are clashing and it heads and the person taking the blame by the press was Warren Baty that they were calling it warrants gate because we love coming up with names there might as a mother take all back to heavens gate which is again Michael Chamino we're talking like this thing that this thing that doesn't leave culture like it's like what is it that bad we recently did an episode on water world and people were calling water world fish tire

so it just keeps falling forward. I wonder though in this day and age will we ever have a flop as

flops right but it's kind of a fun thing like that culture can all agree like that was a flop

you know and that was you know there are movies that are disappointing you know um but this idea of the multi-billion dollar movie like they don't fail I don't know if they fail you know right you you make me want to save Morbius but it's not quite to the same scale. I just love people so Morbius so hard that they wound up putting it back in theaters because they thought people would go see it at least as a joke and then still nobody can yeah we don't joke that way

in this economy. No you can't you can't but by the way I mean I also think that Jared Leto just

“doesn't quite understand that it was a joke like I think he thought people love Morbius um and the”

same thing with Tron I mean I'll never be never more depressing than watching Jared Leto enter

a theater for Tron areas that was half full that were not excited to see him on opening weekend. I was like oh no I feel bad for this guy. I know but that's the thing Hollywood is just the level of so many people making different mistakes like Jared Leto might be taking the fall for Tron but who are the executives who didn't realize that most women under 35 absolutely cannot stand him and will not see anything he's in because we're scared of him he's creepy exactly yeah I get that

exactly so he didn't cast himself is what I'm saying. Now I think also when they get back to New York there's two things that play it's the part of the film that I think is more character based so this is requiring you know Dustin Hoffman and Warren Bady to really find these characters

“and honestly if you talk to a lot of people uh Dustin Hoffman was really”

adept at improvising. Warren Bady not so much so they start getting some tension between the two of them because Warren Bady starts to get what people perceive Dustin Hoffman would be playing these characters like okay no that note that off note isn't exactly the right way of being off note we need to be more like this you know everything became really tense and now Elaine May is trying to find all this funny stuff in the stuff that you know you brought her in for and now Warren Bady

is tightening up but it doesn't come off badly on camera like we said he's very funny in these scenes but they're not having fun but I think the real thing that's looming in New York is the editing room oh shoot we're almost done we have to finish this and finishing it I think I don't know if you've ever worked on a project it is a scariest moment because like okay well like once we wrap we wrapped is do we get it do we not and that became the the final stage of this utter mess it's a mess it's

a you know messy shoot that now is how do we fix it or do we have enough to fix or is it actually great no one really knows right and then I'll see after confront the thing that you just did oh yeah

“you and you have to wonder who is gonna wind up taking the fall for this and what I find fascinating is”

maybe it would be easier to be able to analyze Ishtar if it was either extremely good or extremely bad but I would say the final project is fine right if something is fine then it's harder to take a stance on it so you just go with whatever the extreme opinion is I think Ishtar is actually very good in certain parts what he both is like truly an extremely bad movie in your estimation and why like what makes that classification you know it's an interesting thing because I believe in Amy and

I have had this discussion in the past a movie like the room Tommy was those room bringing up twice should be on the list of best movies ever made because it's such a bad film that it requires as much study because there's something so unique to it like manos the hands of fate yes Paul's been making this argument to me a lot and I have it totally got on board but go ahead ball but I guess what I what I'm fascinated by is film at its core is a passion a passion project

right people are coming to tell a story that they really really want to tell and I think most failures are based in that idea that you know this is something I needed to get out and and you can look at a painting and you can say that's the most beautiful thing ever you can say I don't get it and we don't afford that to film you know we have to judge it it's good it's bad it's right it's wrong and it's the only art that we really look at like that right you know

and and I always see that like comedy falls into this category a lot which is like it's funny it's

not funny well we don't do that with drama yeah there's not like a list of like the top 10 worth symphonies or comedy winners right exactly right symphonies that are so bad they're good and I feel like anytime you're making art there's going to be art that doesn't connect it doesn't

like Amy and I said it's a it's a it's a big swing and a miss but there's so many things that they're

hitting too it's like it's not completely great so I hate like I think that a great bad movie is a movie that isn't watchable but a piece of garbage and as somebody who sat through a lot I can delineate that it's a very small subtle delineation but I often say that the more passionate the director is the better the bad is and when it's more work a day like Sharknado or like Gary Bucy's the ginger dead man like when it's a paycheck movie yeah not so great right

“yeah it's an important distinction yeah I think that's what I would fall too you know because I”

am a film critic for the last year enjoy this times and it's when a film smacks of that cynicism that Paul's describing that since that the people involved in making it are like at the audience will take what we give them that's when I really think a film is bad if you're going for it because when you're like why am I here yeah if I feel like you're insulting me by what you put on the screen because you don't think I know that this is bad or something if you feel

like oh give them something they're going to be holding a phone in their hands anyways it doesn't matter just say the count on this page and then then have Liam Neeson punch the kidnapper on that page that's when I absolutely took out but a film like Ishtar which is trying to do so many walkie tones all at once I'm going to be on the side of this even when I think there are scenes that are

“terrible I mean honestly I really if I could I think there's just one specifically”

maybe two specifically terrible things about Ishtar I just don't think Dustin Hoffman's very good I actually think this movie works if somebody else besides Dustin Hoffman is playing this lead because Warren Bady is fantastic Warren Bady's kind of going for this John C. Riley and Stepbrother's thing you know he's really great I mean he's almost full Andy Kaufman when he's got a headband on and he's playing the bongo's and he's up on stage

it's the energy that Dustin Hoffman has in this film but I find totally off because he is doing the midnight cowboy thing he's the bossy guy I find him very unlikable in this movie as a character and to me that makes the whole thing sink I don't like him I don't care about him I think he's kind of crass and he's not crass to me in a charming or funny way and so the weight of his character drags the whole thing down I think that he actually played too much into character

in a weird way I mean I know I said he's really good improvising I think he knew this character and this is a real like as somebody who has done a lot of performing you bump into a person like this right and I don't think he did the heightened version of it I think he did the real version of it and I hate to say like I hate that it didn't make it they didn't make it and he's a little sour and grumpy about it but not anyway you want to be around him right and so I think that

he's right in the pocket but it goes to show you well what pocket should he be in because this is a movie where I think everybody is in a different film and that to me does fall on Elaine May's shoulders because I would say that is about Ajani like she is acting like she is in a political thriller oh at thousand percent she is totally off bass too for the movie that I

want this to be right and she would always ask these questions and she's like well I'm reading

the script and it's like a screwball comedy and Elaine May is like no you are straight and so she was kind of you know and she said that she would do it but then you look at Charles Groton Charles Groton is I love Charles Groton not the later Charles Groton as much when he's posting like a CNBC show but I like this era Charles Groton he is perfection I think he's he's funny I just love this era of him I think he's in his he's great yeah and I think his CIA scenes are

really funny and kind of only gotten funnier and darker the older I've gotten and the more I know about how this CIA works I mean when Ishtar comes out we haven't heard the stories yet that like the CIA is funding groups like the scorpions to write songs like wind of change to try to bring

“about you know democracy in the iron curtain that's what this movie is about we didn't know”

that that joke was so real you know right I like Charles Groton and Beethoven when he enters the hammer greeting contest with his dog I mean who doesn't I mean Charles Groton you know I love his memoir it would be so nice if you weren't here which is just a beautiful collection of

stories but you know Elaine May I want to go back to her beginning for a second she is an improviser

she is someone who is a confed off the energy of an audience that's her background and I also come from that background I have directed I have written I've produced one of the things that I think being a good improviser has given me is the ability to make a decision and just lean into it

it seems like Elaine May took the idea of like well I made that choice but what if I made this choice or that choice right like she actually saw like a much higher view of it you know where I think it's like any polar said when she was teaching classes back at UCB I love this quote she's like improvising is like driving a car only through the rear view mirror you only know where you've gone and I love that idea and I think that Elaine May was constantly just questioning well

“we in the right place when we went there and I think that that's why maybe on a given day she's”

giving different notes she doesn't know she doesn't I don't think like she was bullied as much as her lack of clarity of what this movie should be created a world in which everybody got to bring their own quirks to it and then created a lot of friction you know because

the truth is you know that story about the sand dunes I get that I understand how film's work

she's scattered that sand dunes she saw that sand dunes they don't just show up there and see the sand dunes unless she's not doing your job you know and if that's the case then she's at fault right like it's sort of like there are a couple things that always ring false to me so either she's I think that she is neurotic I think that in many respects to Amy's point early in this way I was gonna try to all tie it all to I think she's Dustin Hoffman I think that that's why she likes just

Dustin Hoffman in New York and I feel like that little bit of anger that bit of being personicity is her and this is a movie where she sees herself herself in him well why do you think that she was able to direct movies that kind of stayed on the rails in the peasant just like too big of a

budget and too many moving parts she never really did okay she never I mean truthfully I've

read her book I've watched every one of her films every one of her films was an unmitigated disaster and the only one that really stayed true was heartbreak kid because that was a movie where oh my gosh what's his name a Neil Simon forced her to stick to the script forced her to stay in her lane and that was a big issue with the two of them but every other movie ended two of her movies ended in court new leaf and uh Niki of Frankie uh uh Mikey Nicky both ended in court and Frankie and Bobby

and Carol and Alice yeah all of them but they were good they were good yes you almost feel like Hollywood will forgive that if you're good if the thing is good right but I think to she made one good movie one fully good movie I I love Mikey and Nicky but I would say I screen that recently video and people walked out really I mean I love it I love it I I don't want to like I just

“want to be like you have to look at that movie it's very experimental it's very bizarre it's”

unlikeable characters I love it but it does not fully work I believe that to be true I hate to say it but I can look at it I can step back from my own love of it but heartbreak kid is the only movie that I think from beginning to end is a good movie you know in a weird way yeah I like I look at her and I call I'm so bummed because maybe writing is where she did excel because she does have all those great things she's a great performer I mean even up into the state when she was on the

good wife great as that judge on the good wife she's awesome I love her um she's great in the small

time crux you know she whatever she pops up and I feel like she's always very good I mean

she's the reason why I think the bird cage kind of she helps my knuckles come out I mean the bird cage is obviously dated at this point but writing is her strong point you know and I think that's where she can go in million different directions I think actually committing to the writing

“is being a director and that's hard oh this is where I have to say I think that one of the”

old knuckles and major is that she puts in the graduate is the crux of why I don't think the graduate is very good well this is a hot take well okay so I'll try to keep this short you know how there's the scene in the graduate when Dustin Hoffman is showing up at the hotel room for the first time to meet Mrs. Robinson yes he's nervous she takes an inhale of her cigarette he kisses her for the first time while her whole mouth is full of cigarette and then she exhales and just looks at him that is a

direct bit from the old knuckles and macekits let's escape they say do about two teenagers making out in a car and there it's in the movie because it got a hit on stage people that it was funny there but when you put it in this movie with these two characters I feel like it doesn't work at all and it kind of destroys the whole movie because at that point my question is why would this grown ass woman go to bed with this guy for the first time who such a dummy what is she getting out of

this she's bored dude she could have anybody better than this you know yeah so you like the Robert Redford version the version that people have patently like don't know we can't catch Robert Redford even if that joke was in the river Redford when I don't think it would work because I think at that point any woman who's just looking to get her rocks off she goes and finds anybody

writing doesn't fit the character this was where I confess that I haven't seen the graduate oh gosh

“well it's fine I think it's better than fine here's the thing that I'm kind of obsessed with you”

know we talked about the editing who knows what happens in the editing we know that there's three cuts we know that there is a lot of debate and Elaine may love to be editing all hours of the day so they have this you know finally they're able to get a workable thing they release this movie and there we go we you know this movie comes out and I think everybody gets what they want the press gets how we told you David Puttman gets you see I know how to make movies and then you know

wait when you look at the actual numbers they're modest they're not catastrophic the budget and the press coverage of it made like a normal looking return look like a disaster and like every time it came out and I I kind of look at this to one battle after the other it's like why are we rooting for like this movie is critically acclaimed it's you know nominated for a bunch of a why are we like

rooting like I didn't make 50 million in the opening weekend it's like what what are we care

as like the general audience like what do we care what a movie makes why is that in the conversation

“I think that that's so fascinating like we certainly don't know the bottom line of appliances the right”

yeah it's such a very ridiculous thing that we are like what's it to me what's like I didn't lose my I didn't invest in this but yet we are like oh they lost a studio a lot of money and how does that affect any of us but I think that like to Amy's point about you know this film it's neither here nor there I think a lot of critics did talk about this movie like we're talking about it now it's like that's kind of confusing and then there are other people who just wanted

to jump on the bandwagon if it gets a little worse it's but I don't even know what you would say you know I don't know I you know it's it's not like overly long it just feels like it was just the public shaming finally you know like that was it and then it was this over and flated thing that we wanted to enjoy the downfall of but it maybe wasn't is that like it's last portrayal was not even being as bad as we were maybe hoping right yeah it could also be mad at

it for not being worse I would like to see somebody take the ishtar script and just remake the movie

“because I think the script is pretty good I think the script's really funny I think the script would”

work absolutely well today and I think the music is wonderful the music is written by Paul Williams all the bad songs that are weirdly catchy even though they're bad yeah Paul Williams being the guy who wrote you know rainbow connection is one of his biggest hits who is fantastic he's in this movie fan of the paradise it's all about what a musical genius he is I was gonna say isn't he the fan time of the paradise himself yes he is I adore Paul Williams he I think he's fascinating even though

he says that you know what inspired the the music of ishtar his answer that question is still it's nia and a bunch of chemicals he was not sober the entire time he did it but they're fantastic I challenge RAS to remake ishtar with the exact same script and I better be fine I better be better than fine I better be good I would go see now we've spent about an hour talking about this film and how it ballooned terribly the budget was insane now this again I want to put it in context

the year is a 1987 if you don't know it I guess my question to you is what do you think it did cost

oh as like a way to expensive movie that people were upset about 70 million dollars okay

51 million dollars all right 51 million now I mean that's that's big but I do feel like it's when you hear about it in today money yeah and I'll give you some I'll give you some comparison I mean this is interesting like so on touchables that came out the same year right that was about 25 million predator which was a low budget action movie I cost 15 million Superman 4 which was kind of the you know a flop that's the you know that's 17 million so that's the Richard prior one that was

no this is the worst one this is the quest for peace with solar superman but what the studios were kind of loving was anything over this 14 million dollar range was what they were freaking out at

because what they were having great success with at the time was Thromama from the train 14 million

good morning Vietnam 14 million the lost boys 8 million you know dirty dancing 6 million they wanted more of those because most budgets live between 6 and 20 million so they were double they were two movies but if you think about it like two movies worth it's not crazy right it's not the way Titanic was going right you know before it came out it was like you know people would have to see

that never happens and then somehow that happened but I mean it's not the kind of thing you could

count on but this is really is kind of like oh we went kind of overboard but not historically so and I think what this movie lacks honestly is what we were talking about earlier through all this creative tension physical set tensions crew all actors have what it lost was the passion the original idea and I think that if this movie stuck with that we would have something but I think what we got was just something that is a movie it hits the beats it does the thing

which is kind of the worst thing yeah right it becomes the thing it becomes the thing we talk about which is like that's why I feel that this movie is so odd yeah they're great things in it but it's not it doesn't feel like anyone cared at the end right it's almost like a bad relationship it's like oh my god this is the person in the mirror oh everything is great at the end like

“I guess I don't remember that person you know the couple weeks why are we here just two people at”

Costco with no meaning I mean this is where I make my inevitable plug for the final destination series because I feel like it's something there's a good and there's something so great about us you know basically a slaughter series we're like you know because if you compare it to Friday the 13th that has basically a new director with every installment which seems like is being tested out for whether they can do something better and the saw movies were made by the same relatively small

group of people pretty consistently and it always like I won't really try and like defend the

ethics of it that's not the same thing as saying I really like them but you can really tell that all those movies or somebody's baby I totally agree I think that like what I love about James Juan is like he makes crazy movies too that you know they get not everyone works and yes for every conjuring there might be one that just kind of falls a victim on the side you know I think when you keep it tight or you have like again it's a point of view it's a point of view I love the

final destination movies I love this last one and particularly I love how they brought it all together it's silly it's fun and by the way they know the movie they're making I did a movie called Piranha 3D directed by Alex Aja who made a wonderful French movie called High Tension which was so very tense I have to admit I've complained recently on this very show about how strongly I dislike the plot twist in that movie but I was fully on board before we got around to that

“and that's what made me so angry yeah I also agree with that I'm not against I I don't disagree”

how is she driving the very truck that she was chasing but go on but I will say like when we made Piranha 3D Alex Aja wasn't trying to make high attention he got what he was making which was a movie with Piranha and 3D in the title and he leaned into it and it became fun

and that's a movie that I think made like 75 million dollars at the box I was some crazy amount

of money at the box office because he was playing it I mean it's the reason when he made a movie I think years later called like Gator or sewer Gator that can put Nintendo's like it's one of the best movies it's like sometimes you just have to understand what you're making and this is a movie that feels like no one understands what they're making final destination it's almost like you can't mess it up it's going to be group goldberg devices to cause death and that's it

the crazy or they are the more fun we're gonna have with it oh you either like it or you don't yeah very much as a critic I love finding those movies that know exactly what they are and excel at it and wasting those up even if they're just being a piece last year on my top 10 list I put smile to oh yeah because smile to Sarah have you seen smile to yet no I saw smile one and I didn't like it but I heard from my friends that smile to was very good yeah I've heard

from Chelsea Weber Smith actually so there you go smile one is absolutely mid smile to is a masterpiece it is an absolute masterpiece when that happens oh yeah it hits it out of the park it absolutely hits out of the park yeah and I feel like like the direct sequel to an underwhelming horror movie is almost the perfect place to do something great because nobody sees you coming you know I a hundred percent agree it's like this is why I also believe like I have

I worked on a galaxy quest for about two years I loved my experience on it but what I hated about it was that everyone had a very strong opinion about it right everyone had a reason about why it worked and then they wanted to make sure that you incorporated their opinion about it and I

“think that that's deadly because like that's why I think IP is bad and I think this is why we're”

having this glut of mediocre films that come out of IP because people expect too much like the best IP to do is IP that no one cares about like let's make a roll a Logan's run you know sequel like let's do that so like let's have a movie that no one has an opinion on because once you have an opinion on it you kind of lose the ability to be a director or a writer you kind of have to just

and die by that yeah and I do get flinchy when movies like Ishtar become the shorthand

for making something bad because you're saying we don't want movies that take a big risk yeah I wish that we were making fun of the more pieces of the world that are playing into gigantic franchises and playing it safe and then being bad let's let the ambitious disasters what's with them have their own name you know and I and I fear that we are now past the point of no return with this because now if there's any hesitation that movie is going

to streaming ishtar would have gone to streaming right there would have been some decision made along the way and we would dump it over there and maybe that's the choice I love what Adam Sandler did in making his movies at Netflix he's like I'm taking the critics out of it

it's going to be on the front page in Netflix when it comes out like it hated who cares you can't

“break me over the calls for this and I think that the movies that they've made there spawned the”

gamut of being great and weird and not so great and whatever but it's like he's just making things without the fear of that box office number or out that fear of that and I think it's the reason why you see predator badlands killing at the box office because you know if prey came out in the theater which I wish it would have but if it came out in the theater less people probably would have given it a chance and then because they loved prey they saw badlands yeah which is a long game

yeah no way I want to draw a line you're you're saying you're drawing a line that's uniting critics and the box office into one lump I think we could stick up for stuff that fails at the box office I think like public box office failure is it's own different ruby because all 100% yes that it seems like there's movie hustle and I would have gone to the mat to try to get people see that was so great oh no no and you I'm sorry I'm you right that's a different report that's

entertainment reporting and entertainment reporting that's different than critics and I think that what we actually and I speak about this with the most high regard we need more critics like Aenee who are thinking so critically about film and our respected voice that you can listen to there's so few of those I think in a they're they're getting less and less with the with papers dying off with you know cuts across the board you know on all these magazines everything you're losing

this voice and it's and it's a it's a shame because we need the voice of critics that we trust to introduce us to movies to show us maybe you won't like this we were talking about this the other day of movie you know once someone f my son this we got Amy's son yeah yes I think my son on this podcast oh yeah I try to keep a clean you can say it as many times as you want it's really up to you

“see this is great it's very weird people should go see it and and that's what we should be looking”

for but I think I think a lot of review culture is in that world of like let's dunk on it to get that one liner in the rotten tomatoes review you know so you get that splash and and I really respect critics like Aenee and there's a there's a handful of great critics out there that really introduce you to it and that's what I want I want more people to be telling me what I should be watching and now I should be doing it we're not like a hot take of this sucks is bad you know it's

again yeah good point oh buddy you win I'll send you a pizza well I also I feel like you know when people talk about film criticism of course the like legendary short hand is like oh Pauline Kale she was mean which is true she was very good at it but also you know that she would I feel like what we do people don't mention as much as she would champion movies and that she's been a part of the reason that Nashville was really seen by anybody and therefore why we have Robert Altman arguably

exactly because I think critics really want to be the people who find talent and raise it up which has gotten very hard for critics to do now because there's so many little movies coming at every single week like yeah 15 tiny movies but that's a fun thing to do you know because I feel like there's like the sort of as everyone becomes a content creator there's like this

interesting because there's like a thing in heartburn which of course Nora Fren wrote basically

about being married to Carl Bernstein speaking of Dustin Hoffman in a way that like being married to a columnist was like being married to a cannibal because things had barely stopped happening before he was munching on them and putting them in his column and now like everyone gets to live like that and it sucks because like everyday people wake up trying to turn like the fairly normal events of their lives into some kind of content that they can then monetize because there aren't

“any other jobs and it's kind of nice to be reminded that like even if you have to make your life”

into a content mill like it may be more difficult to think of things that you enjoy as opposed to describing things as if they're worse than they are in order to get attention but like it's probably

rather than restating or overstating something to be kind of apically worse than it is you can make it your business to try and share things with people that you think deserve to be enjoyed more. Yeah exactly the job of being a critic has shifted a lot in even just you know I've been doing this game since I got it a college and it shifted a ton even in that time too. It being less about finding dunk and more about dig up and elevate. Need it to be a curating voice as much as a

critical negative slamming voice. I mean don't give me wrong I love to slam on something. I will

definitely slam on the movement deserves it but there's so much stuff out there. Well some

“movies yeah I do want you to do that to them. Yeah there's so much stuff out there that I think”

it's more valuable to find what's good right now even if it means watching a bunch of movies I don't write about because I don't think I can write about them. And you know like I just I feel like I have to acknowledge that I do do a podcast called how to this get made where we dunk on movies but I will say that the idea behind it and it's always been our rallying cry is these movies that we are watching they're so bad they're good these are movies that you want to watch

with a group of friends these are movies that we are spending an hour and a half talking about

not because like this sucks this is the worst we've all made movies we've all directed or you know

or we've all been a part of different processes of film and we have respect for it and how things can go off the rails and I still believe like that's also an art like one of the best things I ever did growing up was like I would go to the movie theater every Friday I would see whatever it was I have a very clear memory of going to see a movie with uh called three some with like Laura

“Flynn Boyle and Billy Baldwin I believe I don't think that that movie is good but I remember just”

like going and then going to Denny's afterwards and just sitting around just like goofing around about it talking about it that was part of the experience is like in movies can have all those things it doesn't mean like not everything has to be there will be blood not everything has to you know like I believe that there's a space for movies like venom you know but yet not everything has to be like the marvel you know version of the things so I'm a big I'm a big believer in

dunking for dunking zig that's bad but just having fun enjoying conversation art becoming art yeah I think it's good yeah it's true I actually hope people see even the movies I do dunk on because at least they're interesting to talk about like if there's nothing to talk about then I don't think anybody should see it but most movies have stuff you want to talk about afterwards yeah you want to get into it I love the conversation starts even when you're like that sucks absolutely yeah

well it's great to see something that's like so infectious sleep ad that you really want to tell people about it you know and I feel like one of the themes here is like so I feel like one of the most annoying kinds of movie today is like the Netflix movie that whether or not it was written by AI people can comfortably argue that it was and that has people saying expository things the whole time because they seem we were cleaning your baseboards which we probably are and where it

just feels like nobody ever really cared like not a single person like everyone is just there to be like well whatever you know well yeah well well we'll get it done and it'll be fine and they is care about it as much as it's possible to care about like you know putting together IKEA furniture we're like you do end up with basically the thing that you plan on getting but I mean that's actually about metaphor IKEA furniture can be very exciting but you know that what we're talking about is like

continuing to love the human element of movies we're like I mean you know my example of a great bad movie manos the hands of fate which kind of got us discovered outside of being a super underground

thing because it was on an episode of MS-T3K in 1993 is incredible because it's you know somebody who

has no business making a movie thinking through how to do it as if no one has ever done it before and badly and feeling you can tell and one of those things were like you're like I know that this was somebody's passion project but why why did they clearly care so much about this terrible story and you do end up with some kind of element of human connection when you kind of when you interact with something either that you love or that you think is because kind of baffling in that way and

that's not therefore kind of letting it be made and shoved out us by the algorithm and not really

“a real person yeah I think exactly what you're describing is probably one of the next”

movements that's going to surge up is I am absolutely terrified about you know AI scripts ruining this industry yeah but I think you're only going to ruin it for a minute and then people will they would rather that's very exciting news for production yeah I like that I choose to believe you I want to think that they're underestimating the audience I really I really have more faith in audience members than they do again that I think is something like monos everybody will

want to watch it because it'll feel alive you'll feel the fingerprints on it like you're describing

and doing shows alive is that it is a unique experience between you and the audience and that is

“something that is not going away if anything touring is growing because I think people want a unique”

experience but I think the future of cinema is and I yes I said cinema is creating a public space where movie theaters are doing small things like hundreds of beavers and having the cast come in for a weekend so it almost feels like a Broadway show where you're getting to see a very special presentation of something with a Q&A or where you are bring back classics about my kids to go

see back to the future for the 40th anniversary in IMAX which was amazing and so much fun we saw

Jaws 50 if it's like I think that we have to reconceptualize what the movie theater is and I think we've seen that in how we serve food there and people gonna have their own opinions about that that's fine on care but what the movie theater needs to become is just we're no longer making enough movies to be like every weekend there's three new movies so you go there and whatever it is it is it's more like what how do we create an event space how do we create something

“I think Taylor Swift God bless her has done that too like I'm making these movies that are”

gonna air in the theaters and I'm making personal deals with the theaters it's like cool that's awesome why don't we make movie theaters like libraries why don't we do like all right

pleurbus is coming out we'll screen the first two episodes at the AMC and yes I could get it

for free but isn't it cooler to watch the bunch of people or a finale like I you know like seeing the lost finale with a bunch of people who's one of the best things ever I love that yeah I feel like this is a great time you know speaking of idiots for independent movie theaters and also for places where film can live or we're you know videos specifically can live archivaly because of how much you can't access that's not on streaming because of random copyright issues or whatever

else but you know that there's a site not in a way that's that predictable but I feel like I can see people returning to what physical media gives us and these and like you were saying these physical

“gatherings around media which I think is you know it's always been about that as much as the”

story itself and it makes me think of the great depression and how they would have you know dish night at a movie theater where you would go and you know they would have prizes and raffles and he get dishes and you were incentivized to come out and spend money because times were tough and they needed to incentivize it which is all to say that I'm still upset about the time I paid like $19 for pretzel and an MC theater and Seattle but also heartbreak feels good and a place like

this I want this pretzel to be better because so big if you could be half as big and better I would be very happy 100% I mean I'm a big I'm a big I'm a big pretzel person I do think what you're saying is you know I haven't really put a label to this it's cost effectiveness too right because if I'm paying $20 to go see a movie I need it to be good right I on some level as of now is a dad of two kids yeah you know for me my wife and my kids are going to see a movie it is

conservatively like 150 dollars with snacks and all that sort of stuff you know like you know like well he's how much Disneyland cost and like the 80s which is really right and I realize there's inflation and everything but yeah it's a it's a very it's a it's a high price to pay and so what we've

done is we've gotten rid of like I'll take a chance on this I know we've tried a million times with like

oh well what if we do the movie pass or whatever it is yeah that's great but that's not for everybody that's not going to be for everybody it's just an impossibility so why not find ways to make it better make it interesting like if you can't lower those prices find other ways to bring people into you like well at least I saw something at least I saw the cast of this movie or at least I had a unique experience because if I'm just paying maybe $10 or $15 less than seeing a live show I'll

go see the live show or I'll spend my money there we are definitely in a stage of gathering I believe that in a very big way so can movie theaters can corporations lean into that that's the question honestly at the end of the day it's not like what can movie theaters like well corporations is it effective enough for them to do that and I don't think that they know if that is true I think we're going to start doing dish night again I mean they should and I think like they have

spent 15 years competing with streaming in television by making bigger and bigger and bigger movies with higher and higher price tags and I heard this one studio executive back in the 80s have a great idea what if we just made cheaper movies well I'm a big a proponent of that I mean if somebody who's like worked in a medium yes yes well there we go we've come full circle to issue in what killed it ultimately sorry it's been more life affirming than I expected to be honest

maybe the real bad movies are the friends we made along the way well look at us we we just

like there is you know and and whether it's about the production or it's about the film like this will be is made it became a joke it became the only far side cartoon where Gary Larson apologized because he didn't see it you know it's like there is something about that you know

he did finally watch it on an airplane that was when he finally decided to watch it shot

could also the airplane movie I love you forever there's something about the kind of like the consumer need for something to be really really bad we're like even if it's not that bad we're going to kind of force it in because maybe ritualistically we just need a terrible movie every once in a while it just feels good can I just say as somebody who is really grown to love the hallmark lifetime films right there is a joy in those films like are they good

I'm going to say yeah they are they're not well they're different definition of good but like the Tory spelling ones are like really good oh and look and you know why I know that they're good because Netflix is trying to make their versions of them and they can't quite nail it no because they're not demanded enough hot frosties good hot frost yes I agree but we're also talking about like you know there's channels that are already in early November playing get ready for

Christmas they're playing two months of every night Christmas movies because they got this backlog I just think it's like it's a secret sauce that they know how to make yeah it's also like I learned a lot from lifetime movies for example that if you're sure a lot and you're a single mom and you're dating a new guy and he seems great he might frame you for a drug possession

and then you'll go to prison and learn about feminism in a way never imagined and are sexually

well I loved kind of the things that I learned that I didn't expect to learn which are

“sometimes you have to pick the first camel yes and better to have movies that feel human”

and fall short of expectations maybe even hugely then movies that feel like they were made by nobody and what else Paul and Amy what are you going to leave us with on this beautifully star day well I guess the question is is it the same to become culturally known for being an example of what not to do as it is to be an example of what to do because there are so many movies that fail there are so many movies that are not good but when you are transcending all of those

and standing head and shoulders above it I think that that might be worth something to

I think what I would say is go see a movie for yourself just go see a movie yourself don't

be very less than having to apologize later you figure out what you think about a movie before you just abide by the vise that's on the spirit of you're wrong about exactly it's fun to hate something but you know maybe check it out and you might actually enjoy it and then that'll be kind of fun because you can be a contrarian yeah I also feel like my answer to the question of is it better to be known as a you know legendary flop or a legendarily great not your job kind of a person is that

it does feel maybe equally arbitrary you know we're like if somebody makes what seems to be a great movie does that mean that the director is great or does it mean that people who we don't know to credit for it being great where the ones who knacked it over the line or the sort of the secret sauce and you know because so many people are involved in so many factors are there so it feels like whether you're known as one of the greats or one of the great flops feels more arbitrary than

we would maybe like and then there's someone like Melville who like destroyed his career during

“his own lifespan with the only thing we read that he wrote anymore um which is my wee deck”

and which people hate it because it's so boring but also it's so great because sometimes great things are boring and that's another stance I feel passionately about so I but I feel like that can be freeing too or it's like you can't really control how people are going to receive what you do so you just kind of have to to do the thing that you care about most um and hopefully that people pay you for that's nice too. I say this too like I think that as an actor and a writer

and a director and all these things you can't control the outcome you can only control the time that you spend on something and you have to enjoy that time it's you learn from that time good or bad you know you make mistakes and that's all part of growth right it is uh we can't just succeed succeed succeed and I think the things that I have brought with me in my career has been

“a lot of lessons learned by failure I think you learn a lot more by failure than you do by success”

I know that that's an an old adage on some way but it's like you do because you're forced to critically look at what went wrong and you can't just say well it was the audience you know but I can also say I made a great show the show Black Monday with Don Cheeto and Regina Hall

fulfilling experiences I had it aired on show time in a time of hour-long dramas and no one

had show time that I knew and while we got good reviews like no one watched it we got to do three seasons which was a blessing to do that but it was also like yeah I can't control it more than it was great so when I look back on it I don't look back on I wish we would have gotten more press or I wish we would have more seasons I can only look back on and go I had a great time yeah it's a really good show by the way I'm really glad you made it I am too and it's like but that's

“the thing it's like that's what you look back on on our deathbeds right we're not looking back at the”

box office receipts you know it's like ah well at least we made a lot of money or if you were that would be very depressing and then you say rose bud and yeah exactly no but I think that's true because I mean this is the time it feels like the creative worlds are falling apart and goals are shifting and one of the goals I just keep hearing about from all of my friends and all of the different wings of of filmmaking and writing and podcasting and music that everybody's in is just like

how can I at least figure out how to feed myself all enjoying my life every day as much as evenly possible you know like even if mansions are off the table can we at least have a life that we enjoy absolutely right yeah I think I think most people I don't know about most but I feel like a lot of people especially now recognize how precious it is to just have some sense of community and stability and getting to eat you know enough of the food that you like and getting to come together

in community creatively I guess to go to the movies sometimes it's great on top of that it's true I don't know it feels also just great to yeah I just engage with the human in entertainment and feel like you're watching something that wasn't made as cynically as possible and also you know I've got like the ultimate sin of like this Netflix type of bad movie is that it doesn't

“care if it's wasting your time you know and I think that's one of the big things too is just to feel like”

the thing I'm consuming even if I don't like it this was made by somebody who valued the time that they put into it it's true and I'm realizing I said mansions thinking of the standards of

doesn't Hoffman getting paid five and a half million dollars for making sure most of my friends

just want to know that they can make rent but that's fine yeah that'll be amazing you know I often have said that I've worked in a world of entertainment that is very much like a construction worker you know you build one building and move on to the next one you know and it's like and and what I think people are really lamenting right now in Hollywood is it used to be easy to make a living in Hollywood like you get staffed on a show you'd be a guest artist show and that's

what's I think has got been going away is like this middle class version of Hollywood you know it's not even just breaking in it's it's a you know or like it's a reason why you have and no offense to page or post call but for page or post call films in summer why do we need that we don't need that we should have more people you know but it's like it but everyone's like I turn nervous take a chance we got a guy to him in there but the other movies making a rationally more money than

others I don't know but people know him that's gonna work or I'm not even on the level of just you know that it used to be and hope I hope it still is but it does seem like people are making every effort they can to chip away at this that if we replace extras with AI then that's actually

you know there was a time at least when you could basically make a living doing that yes absolutely

and you learn that's the other thing too you learn that's this is a business of mentorship right and at the end of the day AI is cheating right you know on some level right but I also believe that it's not about like is AI bad I think there's gonna be a lot of things that we're gonna get out of that the same way that your phone can make a movie and you can edit it on your phone right like we couldn't like when I was a kid I would have killed for that I'm watching my kids go nuts to be

able to make movies like that's all I wanted to do and you know I got the big video I get the camcorder so that yeah there's gonna be tools and techniques it's but we can't let it do is take away the fun stuff right it's like you know it's like I don't want my AI to create art I want my AI

“to pay my bills you know or set up my finances or you know like that's what I want”

right if we're asking the robots to create art while we count our money then we have things backwards yeah guys if we just told Tollywood we did let's go see each tollywood yeah well this has been beautiful and let's all go make some bad art and maybe if we intend to make bad art it'll accidentally loop around and be good or whatever let's go make some art with our friends and Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson tell us about your show and if there's an

episode that you recommend for people who haven't listened yet if maybe there's a place that you'd like to start against a favorite that either of you have. Well half of me feels like if this is

which is all about decisions and directors and clashes and egos and buzz and people

“running for disaster it is a movie that by the way we got to show this summer at the low”

speed of three here and last Angela's to a packed house that had a blast it was really fun getting to see that large and we thought hey maybe nobody will ever get to see water world

large again because this movie has just been known as a disaster but we are not usually known

as the bad disaster flop movie show we are unspooled we started by going through the entire if I top one hundred and now we have just been going through other major lists the letter box top 250 the IMDB top 250 and the New York Times a thousand central films but also really just talking about what we find really interesting you know we're Paul and I are just really curious people in the world of movies so every week we just talk about something like the whiz recently

and just get to pull apart how it was made how we feel about it how something can look like a disaster and feel like a disaster and yet be fascinating yeah I think that you know if you're looking for a place to start on the show like Amy said water world is great if you want to hear

“about a flop but the truth is find the movie that you like I think that that's always the best”

way in to a movie podcast like don't like let us introduce you to a movie you've never heard of

before I think our show works great as a book club but also a remembrance club like oh you love ET let's talk about ET you love back to the future we'll go well let's go there like start off there and and get the vibe of the show and and disagree with us agree with us whatever you'd like to do

“but I think that's the best way in find your favorites we have done over 300 movies we recently”

brushed up our back to the future one because that's a film that we just continually find new things in all the time do conversations yeah thank you so much again for joining me and thank you for I don't know just for reminding people whoever needed to be reminded that it's just fun to make stuff let's go do that let's go do that I love it you

you